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'Yagga' Rowe Tackles Apartheid (Pt. 3)

In this installment of our interview with Lawrence 'Yagga' Rowe,
the former West Indies batting stylist addresses the controversial
decision to lead a 'rebel' side to South Africa.

Why did he agree to tour South Africa during apartheid? Was it
the money? Did Prime Minister Michael Manley try to stop him from
going? How did it affect his relationship with his close friends?
Did he experience racism first hand? Rowe provides all the
answers...

We're going to talk about South Africa now. Did all of these
things that happened to you influence your decision to go to South
Africa?

Not totally. In the beginning stages of the South Africa
situation, I was not sure if I was going to go because of my family
at home as it was such a touchy subject. I was married at the time,
I had my family here, I had children going to school here, my
parents were living here, my mother had come back home.

The person who approached me came to Jamaica and visited with me
about playing. It was Gregory Armstrong the Barbadian. He spoke to
me about the Jamaicans of interest who were Everton Mattis, Richard
Austin and I. I contacted them and set up the meeting with them,
and I remember after the meeting with Gregory, Everton Mattis said
to me "Skip if you're not going, I'm not going". (I was the Jamaica
captain at the time). I said to him "No, this is a choice you have
to make for yourself. It is not something I can advise you on. You
have to look at your situation and make a decision if you want to
go".

How did Gregory Armstrong sell it to you? What was the reason
he gave as to the purpose of the tour, because of course, it would
have been a touchy situation.

Prior to the tour coming up, I always wanted to go to South
Africa.

Even with Apartheid?

Even with Apartheid going on I wanted to see what South Africa
was like with Apartheid, that was just me. I wanted to go.
Ironically when we played in Barbados in 1981 I think it was, in
the Shell Shield which we lost, we actually joked about going to
South Africa - Johannesburg and Durban and those places - in the
Barbados dressing room after the game. There was nothing in the air
at that time about South Africa. We were just joking at the time
and to see that one year later we were faced with the situation of
going to South Africa.

So, when I was called by Gregory Armstrong, he told me that they
were approached about getting a West Indies team there. A match was
set up in one of the Virgin Islands for all the people who were
more or less to be selected, to attend a cricket match there that
was put on and then the South Africa situation would be discussed
in full there. I could not have made it because I was the Jamaica
captain and we were in trials at the time so I didn't go. My
instructions were to be briefed about what happened after the
meeting. I was briefed about what happened, and who were going,
when Gregory Armstrong came to Jamaica to see me and I told him I
don't think I was interested in going because of quite a few
implications.

I was in business with Mikey Holding and Basil Williams at the
time, my family structure, the whole situation of what is going to
happen after the South Africa situation. So with all of that, I
said no. And then I was called by Dr Ali Bacher at my house. I was
living in Forest Hills at the time. He said to me that I am the
person who they wanted to captain the team - one. Two - if I was
not coming, the package wouldn't be worth their while because we
didn't have enough star players in it, so if I wasn't coming it
would be more or less a no-go and he wanted a decision from me
within the next two days and I said I would think about it and get
back to him. Now I was not only made to be aware that I was a
player but I was made aware that I was going to be captain. So it
was now more pressure.

It is reported that Michael Manley asked you not to go. Is
that true?

No, he didn't. I know that he didn't want me to go but he didn't
ask me not to go. He had wanted to see me before I went and I did
not see him.

He wanted to see you before you made the decision?

Before I actually went. He heard that I was on the list to go to
South Africa; it was now published with who and who were going. I
was at a particular person's house the night when I made my
decision to go, I don't want to call his name. I told him and he
actually gave me a message and said Michael Manley wanted to see
me. I knew what he was going to tell me. I did not want to change
my mind at that time, so I didn't go to see the Prime Minister.

Why didn't you want to change your mind at that time?

I'm a person like this. When I vet things totally and I decide
my mind that I'm going to do it, then I'm going to do it.

What was the vetting process like? Did you talk with your
wife?

I spoke to my wife and I spoke to my mother.

Did they give you any advice not to go?

They didn't give me any advice not to go. I just spoke with them
in terms of what the implications might be.

Because it was stated that you would have been
banned?

Yes, I would have been banned, but also probably physical harm,
because it was such a violent subject at the time. Remember my
family was going to be here, I had kids going to school. You never
know what people would do so it was a tough decision from all these
points of view.

While you were making your decision, were you aware of the
atrocities that were being committed against non-white South
Africans, under Apartheid?

Yes. This was my thought process at the time. By going I didn't
believe we could have made it any worse for the [non-white] South
Africans. The second thing was by going, there was just a
possibility that we might have a little opening and especially if I
went and we won, it would have been a victory for the black people.
Number three, money was involved.

Was the money that attractive?

The money was attractive at the time, it was an attractive
package.

Put it into context for me in terms of what West Indies players
were being paid if anything. How did it compare?

You couldn't compare it.

Like a hundred times more than what you were getting paid?
Fifty times more?

Yes, it was like sixty times more than what you were getting
paid. And most of the guys were pissed off with the West Indies
Board.

Why were the guys pissed off?

A lot of guys were pissed off with the way they were treated.
Some guys were treated badly by the West Indies Board.

Treated badly how?

Not selected when they should have been clearly selected.

Well, who determines that you should be selected?

Well, your performance determines that. Your performance and
your behaviour determine that. You see people with less performance
than you getting in, if they didn't like you, if you were a person
who spoke your mind they would get rid of you, so things like that,
and forget you. You were the forgotten one.

Case in point Sylvester Clarke. He was the man who was in front
of Malcolm Marshall as a bowler for the West Indies. On their first
tour to India, when we went to Packer in I think 1979/80, they went
on the tour to India. Sylvester Clarke I think got 24 wickets in
the Test series, I think Malcolm got about five, but in the next
series he got selected over Sylvester. So you had people who were
disillusioned by West Indies Board.

Were you one of the disillusioned?

Yes too, because I thought I should have been selected after I
made 116 here against England in 1980/81, I thought I should have
gone to Australia with the West Indies team and they dropped me.
They threw me through the window and I don't think I would have
played for the West Indies again, to be honest with you. I didn't
think so. They had thrown Kallicharran through the door too. At age
31, they dropped both of us. We were still young enough and they
threw us out of West Indies cricket.

So here is an offer monetary wise, 60 times more, you have your
family and for some people, like Everton Mattis these people didn't
own a car, had four or five children, didn't have a house, didn't
have anything the people of influence would have passed them on the
road. If they were leaving a Jamaica match you had to go get the
bus with your bag. How do you tell a man in a position like that
not to accept US$100,000 at the time to go play five months of
cricket over the two tours?

But your situation wasn't that desperate?

No, that's why I named this particular person to you. In terms
of finance I wasn't that bad off here.

So the question that people will ask is why blacklist
yourself, you're not financially bad off, why risk the whole
political backlash being banned etc. to go. Was it because you
never thought you would never play for West Indies again? Was that
the main thing?

That wasn't the main thing but that was a part of it, but my
beliefs that I told you about earlier on. I didn't think we would
have hurt black people in any way by going on the tour. I didn't
think so. If I thought for a moment that it would put on more pain
on the black people of South Africa I would not have gone. I didn't
think it would. I thought that it might just help somewhat if we
went there and we won, it could be a motivational factor for black
people.

And the other part of it was that the whole thing would be
thrown back on me now wherein if my decision was not to go, people
like Mattis would be denied. My decision was a decision that was
made from a lot of different standpoints at the time.

Ok, you got to South Africa. What was the welcome
like?

I must give you first the run down when we were going everybody
said we left like a thief in the night. It didn't work like that.
We actually got out separately. People thought that I had left out
of Montego Bay. I left right out of Manley airport and no press was
there when I left. I went on to Miami and then New York and picked
up a flight from New York to South Africa.

On the flight from New York to South Africa, everybody is on the
flight now we are going, we are laughing, people have having drinks
and we are talking. The last five minutes of that flight, I can
remember it vividly. There was total silence. I think everybody was
more or less thinking the same thing now. We are now getting ready
to land in South Africa. Whoever was thinking about a career for
the West Indies again, it is now gone, regardless of how you were
thinking. It hit everybody now that hey, this is it. This is the
moment of truth now. We are here, we're coming down, what are we to
expect when we get down there? What would the black people be
feeling when we walk off the plane and we might see a black person
here or there. What would be going through a black person in South
Africa when we get down? This was the thinking of most of the
guys.

When we got off the plane and we started walking towards
immigration and customs, we saw some black people working around
the airport. They were looking, curious you know. Then we were met
by the South African officials. I hear everybody tell me that we
had to sign things to get 'Honorary White' status to enter. If I
got 'Honorary White' status, I was not aware of it. They didn't
stamp my passport. They protected our passports because of what was
happening in South Africa. We were told that they were going to try
and protect our passports by not stamping our passports because we
might have problems after the tour is finished and we might go to
other countries.

People might want to create a problem for you, so for these
reasons our passports were protected from South African stamp. But
we had an immigration form that was filled out and that form was
stamped, just like anywhere else.

So this 'Honorary White' thing, you didn't know about
it?

I didn't know about it. I didn't sign anything, I didn't write
up any form which states that I was an 'Honorary White'. If you
land in South Africa as a black man, and you were automatically an
'Honorary White' then I was probably was from that point of view.
But there is nothing that I knew about.

So we landed and I didn't know there would have been so much
press there. But when I got off the plane there was, I mean a
million press people and Jo Piminsky he was the president of the
South African Cricket Union and he came across and said to me you
have to address the world press. Right away, I jumped in front of a
mike and I remembered saying something like "we are professionals
and we are here to do a job". I didn't want to get in any political
thing, then a few questions were thrown and I answered them, but I
stayed away from the political side of things.

What was life like for that first year? Where did you live
and so on?

We were there for six weeks. We lived in hotels. We stayed in
top class hotels. We were treated very well.

The people who looked after you were blacks?

Mainly blacks. Most of the hotels we went to were manned by
blacks. I was actually very surprised.

What was their reaction to the team?

They were a little withdrawn. I remember one particular morning
I was talking to Dr Bacher in the lobby of the hotel and we were
talking one-on-one and a few black people in the hotel were looking
on in amazement, you know for a black person to be interacting with
somebody like this in this way.

I was trying to ask some questions here and there as to, we
didn't know that black people held such jobs like front desk and
things like that in South Africa. We were made to believe that
black people wouldn't even be inside the same hotel with white
people before we left. That's the impression we got. When we got
there, they were manning the front desk they were porters,
everything. What we found out later on was that they got lesser
salaries to do the job, so they were discriminated against in terms
of their salary. They were never paid the same amount of money to
do the same job as whites and as we go by, probably you in South
Africa at the time would have had more privilege than I would have
had because you are little bit lighter than I am, and the Indians
would have had more privileges than you have.

So if you talk to the Indian person about South Africa, he would
have a different concept of South Africa, you would have a
different concept and I would have had a different concept of South
Africa. These are things we didn't know until I got there and you
start to ask a few questions and you start to find out a little bit
more.

Conditions were made on the tour where we questioned the South
African Cricket Union before I went there; would black people be
allowed to be at the ground where we played? Yes. Where would they
not be allowed to go? Members pavilion, they would be allowed to go
anywhere on the ground apart from the members pavilion. I was
satisfied with that because that's what happened in the world
everywhere. We had got to the stage where if the black people were
not allowed anywhere we were playing, we would have had a problem
with that.

And they stuck to that?

Oh, yes, they stuck to that and everywhere we played, black
people came. They were allowed to be around the ground. I still
have a picture when I was signing some autographs in an airport and
it was all black people there.

What would you say were the positive effects of the tour on
Black South Africans?

I tend to believe that by going...I want to say something before
we even get to that. We were not under the umbrella of the West
Indies Cricket Board when we went there. We were a bunch of guys,
West Indian players who were together. We were self managed but we
knew we had one common goal and the money didn't make a difference
now, it was like we were playing for nothing, it's like we weren't
paid. Everybody put the money aside and we decided in our minds
that we had to win at all costs, we had to win. For this tour to be
a success for us, we had to win. We worked our butts off to beat
them. The discipline that we put into our preparation for the two
tours was unreal.

More than you did for the West Indies?

I wouldn't say more, but when you are there and you have no
board to control you, you have no board management to control you,
we are individuals now playing as a West Indies team you would tend
to think that people would believe, and you're being paid fairly
well, that people can go off and do what they want to do and it
doesn't matter what kind of cricket you play, you understand. But
we didn't do that. We got together as a unit and knit together, we
installed curfew on ourselves and people adhered to it and we
worked well to win. So there was a common purpose for I think all
the guys who went there, that we had to win.

You had started to answer the question about the positive
effects of the tour on Black South Africans.

Yes. I tend to believe that by winning and the kind of phone
calls I got there when we were playing a best of five One Day
international series and we had won the first three and we lost the
fourth one and the amount of calls I get from people, black people
calling me saying "what happen, you guys lost". So I said "well we
won the series and probably we got a little." and they said "no,
no, no you have to beat them every time for us."

o they were probably using you as an outlet?

That's what I'm saying. I don't know, I mean most things in
history, as I always say, the politicians always feel like that
they are right. I was always one who believed that you can never
correct anything unless you actually go into it. I believe the
worst thing that happened to us is that influential black people
didn't get an opportunity to go to South Africa earlier.
Influential blacks. I believe the barriers of Apartheid probably
would have broken down earlier if that had been done. But I believe
the South Africans, the racist South Africans conned the rest of
the world in not getting these people in.

I'm just giving you a little politics now, because there is
nobody of influence, any sports personality of influence who could
have gone to South Africa in those days and get away with it. You
were banned or you were blacklisted. They wanted Frank Worrell to
lead a team here, they didn't want us to come to South Africa, they
would have played us in the West Indies but they didn't want us to
come to South Africa and one can read through that. My reading
through it is that it would have been detrimental if we had gone
there and beaten them at that time. Here is a bunch of black guys
playing white South Africa in South Africa because one of the
things we found out when we got there is that Black South Africans
never played cricket, they played soccer. They had it as the white
man's sport.

A comment was made when we beat them in South Africa. "Why did
you pick such a powerful team to come here to South Africa and beat
us?" They wanted to beat us to demonstrate to the rest of the world
that they were superior. The other comment that came out of it was
that they had to go into Soweto and find a Sylvester Clarke. You
have this big burly black fast bowler destroying South Africa. We
destroyed them, so they now were going into the black township to
go find a black man who can bowl as fast, I mean today...

His name is Ntini!

He's probably one of the best fast bowlers in the world right
now. I'm prepared to say that most things in history were a
negative before it became a positive.

Do you think the tour had any negative effects on Black South
Africans?

I couldn't see how it could. I don't know of it, but I couldn't
see how it could because what was happening to black people in
South Africa was happening there before we went there and whether
or not we had gone there, it would still have been going on. By us
going there, it's a possibility in my opinion that it probably
could have motivated them in another light, wherein they see now
that black people can do as good, or better, than the whites.

Or on the opposite side, do you think they could have been
saying but "look at our 'brothers' they know what these white
people are doing to us, but yet still they come here and take their
money"?

That could be a part of it too, and I have no doubt that
probably a section of them was probably saying that. But it wasn't
shown to me and I have no doubt that you would probably have had
Black South Africans, especially Black South Africans in top
positions, they would have felt miserable that we were there. They
would have felt that we were pirates, and taking the White South
Africans money to come there under the circumstances that the Black
South Africans were faced with.

Have you ever spoken to anybody who was under the Apartheid
regime there, a black person, and seen how they felt?

No, never got to do that.

Is that something that you might be interested in
doing?

Oh yes, most definitely, I would have been open to that. What
happen is we drove the South African streets, I drove by myself. I
had gone into stores by myself, chatted with blacks in the street,
chatted with whites in the street and didn't have a problem. Nobody
stated anything and I didn't go in there trying to make people
believe that I was Lawrence Rowe, a member of the West Indies
cricket team. I was just a normal person. My wife and myself...

Oh, she went with you?

Yes, she went with me the second tour, my daughter was with me
at the time too. We went shopping we walked around South Africa we
went places. We saw one of our players, Colin Croft, run into a
serious part of Apartheid on a train. But we were looking for
things like those. We wanted to feel Apartheid. It's not that we
were running away from it or believed that Apartheid didn't exist
in South Africa, by no means. He was ordered to the back of the
train because he was sitting in the front of the train.

So he didn't say "No, I'm Colin Croft"?

No, not at all. We wanted to see Apartheid. There were a lot of
the rules, the apartheid laws that were on the books which were
very relaxed by the time we got to South Africa. I went with
Kallicharran into the townships and we saw some very wealthy
Indians and these people had a totally different concept of South
Africa when you spoke with them.

Your figures on both tours were modest, apart from a century
in the 1st 'Test' in December 1983. Was the pressure of captaincy,
of knowing what uproar was being created at home; was it all
weighing heavily on your batting?

Oh most definitely. And I remember making a pair in a match,
round about the time that Michael Holding and I had a disagreement
about him coming to South Africa. That's water under the bridge
now.

* Look out for the fourth and final installment of this
interview, where Rowe discusses the effects of the life ban on the
'rebel' cricketers.

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